internationalisation in science in the prism of bibliometric indicators

eviewed journals draw their legitimacy, as an intermediation, from
organisation of certification and archival. For the first time perhaps,
anticipation on the mid-term future of the system becomes difficult,
since alternative models can emerge both for certification and
archives, on principles of self-organised and decentralised science
(Ginsparg, 2000, Harnad, 2001). An undisputable progress in
internationalisation of communication, besides the web posting of many
types of scientific documents and teaching material, is the online
availability of journal articles through electronic portals, which can
be a bonanza for countries or provinces deprived from easy access to
literature (see in particular the RFBR 8 initiative in Russia). The role
of Internet for access of peripheral countries to information and
knowledge is a planetary level stake. 9 Free or easy access to many
sources contributes to open competition, with obvious limits for tacit
knowledge exchanges.
4 - INTERDEPENDENCE NETWORKS
We will mainly focus on co-authorship networks. They only represent
an instance of international co-operation (see above), but sort of
"certify" a particularly intense form of collaboration.
1. Co-authorship networks
Due to their richness of interpretation and their documentation at
the institutional level in several databases, co-authorship networks
have given birth to a huge amount of contributions from theoretical,
methodological and political point of view. The reader is referred to
the chapter by Glaenzel & Schubert for methodological points and a
bibliography. In this section we will focus on some determinants and
limits of international collaboration. Basically collaboration is
driven by the same engines as other internationalisation mechanisms, in
the framework of strong cultural and national constraints. The need for
collaboration, the first engine of internationalisation, is inherent to
scientific community, anchored in the complementarity of competencies.
Collaboration is generally seen as a natural response to specialisation
and increasing competition pressure, and brings better citation returns
(Herbertz, 1995), even contributing to an inflation of citation figures
(Persson et al., 2003). The term "coopetition" was coined to reflect
the mixes or changeovers of collaboration and competition. It quite
well applies to scientists' behaviour. Top-down initiatives back this
8 Russian Foundation for Basic Research
9 The first phase of UN WSIS (the World Summit on the Information Society) was held in
Geneva 10-12 December 2003, however with a moderate success.